Nordenfelt 0.12 is out. This is the last version before Nordenfelt goes beta. What a joy!

War Zeppelin

Finally the last missing endboss found its way into the game. The war zeppelin:

This boss took about 100 work hours to complete because it underwent several design changes. The first drafts either looked bad or did not result in interesting gameplay. In the end the double-balloon design turned out to allow proper attack patterns.

The Deep Web is a part of the Internet which can’t be indexed by search engines. Examples of not-indexable resources are private websites (password-protected) or dynamic content. Google, Bing and other crawler bots just can’t get there.

Why am I telling you this? Today Nordenfelt got updated to version 0.8, yet the changes aren’t obvious. This is because only the final boss got (massively) improved. It now has one more combat form and several more attack patterns.

For nearly a year this blog was quiet. If you want to know why, please read about the reasons here.

But I don’t want to talk about the past. The present is much more interesting…

Nordenfelt 0.7 Released

This is an excerpt from the change log:

added final boss

added level type desert

added equipment Omega Weapon and Auto-Aim System

added play analytics (player gets asked for permission)

(re-)added score system

replaced “level items” by “tech tree points” for unlocking equipment

primary weapon levels no longer need to get unlocked

player ship moves slower while shooting

I’m curious what percentage of players will allow the game to send information about their play behavior. The data is anonymous and only for reasons of game improvement. Nevertheless, people have the fear of being spied out. Therefore, enabling the analytics module is just for the brave. 😉

It’s happening: Nordenfelt will be available on Desura on 9th of July.

The release was planned earlier but I made a mistake. I decided to add a new level boss while the latest version has been in Desura review. As soon as the initial boss draft moved across the screen I felt the urge to include it in the release. So be it. God knows why my rational brain did not intervene: “A new boss? Fella, you know this will delay everything for 3 weeks, don’t you?”.

Delay, delay, delay – it happens every once in a while.

Anyways, 9th of July is the day:

The following stuff bears the blame for “being late”:

New Level Boss

The new flying warship level boss is a larger-than-screen enemy. You have to blow it up section by section:

This boss introduced a crucial part in shmup design: scriptable bullet patterns. Patterns help players to memorize attack forms and let them come up with canned tactics how to dodge bullets.

(Not so) New Equipment

This unlockable equipment is great when broad swarms of enemies enter the screen. Flashes of electrical discharge span over close neighbors. This way you can blow up whole flocks with less movement. Quite helpful when the screen gets littered with bullets.